Kickstarter has proven to be one of the biggest influences on the board game industry over the past decade. It completely overthrew the traditional publishing system by directly linking publishers to consumers. Not only that, it has created a platform that allowed for a unprecedented level of creativity and out of the box thinking. Likely, a level that would be considered nearly impossible in a traditional publishing environment. Some of the hottest industry trends right now can for a large part be credited to Kickstarter. And with that, the many projects that have found their launching platform there.